


The Seven Suitors of Asami Sato

by BobLoblawLawBlog



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Coming of Age, F/F, F/M, Romance, Sexual Identity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-09
Updated: 2014-05-09
Packaged: 2018-01-24 03:19:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1589756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BobLoblawLawBlog/pseuds/BobLoblawLawBlog
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Asami's romantic history from early childhood to the end of Book 2. Smutty.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Seven Suitors of Asami Sato

**Author's Note:**

> This began as a prompt fill for tumblr user basingtei, who wanted Irosami smut, but it turned into much more than that.

I.

The first time she kissed someone who was neither her mother nor her father, Asami was four years old. It happened while she was playing underneath the abandoned dinner table along with the five-year-old son of her father’s business associate while the adults tippled and discussed politics in the parlor. 

“When I grow up I am going to be a queen like my mama,” she said to her playmate.

“You’re mama’s not a queen, stupid,” the little boy sneered. He had slicked hair and wore a gold-embroidered vest and looked like an officious little prince himself. 

“She is too a queen!” She clapped a tiny hand over her mouth when she realized she was yelling. If she made too much noise, the servants would come and pack her off to bed. But there were tears at the edges of her eyes. She couldn’t bear to be contradicted, not by anyone. 

On nights like this, she would watch her mother with her beautiful silks, glittering diamonds, sleek black hair gathered up on top of her head. And she would think about the picture book where she saw a photo of the Earth Queen and thought her mother was so much more beautiful. She just had to be a queen herself. 

“Sorry,” the little boy said huffily, seeing how upset she was. He picked up two of the clay pro-benders off the floor and made them fight. “It’s a tie-breaker, see?” he said.

But Asami wasn’t paying attention. She was peeking through the legs of the table and chairs and watching her mother’s graceful arms as she reached to idly ruffle the hair at the back of her father’s neck. 

“If your mama’s a queen, that makes you a princess,” he said. Asami wrinkled her tiny nose because the word didn’t sound as regal as “queen,” and when her nurse called her “princess” it was usually while scolding her.

“As a princess, you’ll have suitors who will try to kiss you,” he continued. 

Asami wrinkled her nose even further. “Why would they want to do that?”

“Because everybody wants to kiss a princess.”

“Do you want to kiss me?” She turned from watching the grown-ups and stared at him hard. He had long, girlish eyelashes and a soft, round face. His lips were full and slightly pouted, and as she focused on them she saw that he was leaning forward, preparing to crawl on all fours over to her. 

So she closed her eyes and waited, and after a long time, she felt a cool, soft pressure against her lips. It was fleeting, and when she opened her eyes again, she saw the boy retreating backwards. 

“What did you think?” he asked.

She shrugged her little shoulders. “It was ok I guess.”

II.

When she was six, her mother was gone, and Asami knew for certain that she wasn’t a queen. People kept coming in and out of the mansion, servants with hunted looks in their eyes and strangers wearing black and tutting over her as she sat alone in the great room.

Despite the fact that everyone was walking on tiptoe, the mansion seemed to have more echoes than usual, and her little frame shook each time a door slammed. She fled the house to play in the front gardens, but in the end, she wound up sitting on a bench and watching the Satomobiles that made an almost constant procession through the front gates and up to the house.

At one point, a little boy came up the walk carrying an arrangement of flowers that was larger than he was. He was the florist’s boy, and his pants had patches. The hems had clearly been let out as far as they would go and still failed to reach his ankles. He glanced at her for a little too long as he walked past, and her face burned. Pity was exhausting.

Ten minutes later, she was still sitting and watching the Satomobiles, and a figure stole up next to her. She turned, startled, and saw the florist’s boy pull something out of his vest. His small face was solemn, and she could see red, raw scratches on his fingers as he handed her a single rosebud. He said nothing, but a look of understanding passed between them. And when he left, she clutched the bloom to her chest and refused to give it up when her nurse found her.

III.

For the next seven years, she saw little of other children. Her father was her only friend, though as the years went on, he was drawn more and more into his work and farther away from her. And he had secrets. 

It was a benign, almost indulgent sort of neglect. When he was away, she was in the constant care of instructors—in history, languages, manners, combat, mathematics, and the inner workings of a Satomobile engine. She had everything a girl could ask for, and when he was with her, she was petted and adored. But more and more, she was victim to insupportable sensations of loneliness, of exclusion from his world and from the larger world outside their front gates.

Which is why at the age of thirteen, she demanded she be sent to school. And never one to refuse his daughter, her father spared no expense and had her sent to the most prestigious academy for young ladies in the Earth Kingdom. 

Her roommate that year was from the Northern Water Tribe, the daughter of some minor chieftan who wished to see his child acquire some southern refinement. Her eyes were watery blue, her skin the color of toffee, and though she was not a terribly skilled bender, she could suspend water droplets in the air and make it snow inside their dormitory room to Asami’s delight. 

She quickly learned that Aruna had no mother either, but aside from that, their lives weren’t the slightest bit similar. They would stay up late at night, and Aruna would tell her about the Northern Lights and the penguin-seals. And Asami would tell her how the engine of a Satomobile worked. And then they would gossip about their teachers and which of the older girls they thought was the most interesting. And on especially cold nights when the frost coated their windows, Aruna would climb into bed with her, and they would tangle their skinny legs and throw the covers over their heads and try to stay quiet so that the dormitory matron wouldn’t hear.

One night Aruna kissed her. They were under the covers in Asami’s bed with a flashlight and a stack of pro-bending magazines in between them. Her eyes were starting to get heavy, and they were quiet, staring at each other through half-closed lids. And then Aruna smiled and propped herself up. Asami watched, her body languid and warm, as the other girl came closer, hovered over her, and then pressed her lips softly against hers. 

It felt wonderful, and when Aruna kissed her again, Asami wrapped an arm around her and pulled her closer. Though they were many miles inland and it was freezing cold, the girl still smelled vaguely of ocean air on a summer day, and her lips were warm and wet. And they kissed and kissed again until they fell asleep in each other’s arms. 

Most nights after that were the same. They kissed and held each other and shared secrets. It was innocent and sweet, and Asami felt a swell of longing when Aruna would reach up to tease her hair the way her mother used to do with her father. And when their legs tangled under the covers, something inside of her stirred, and she found herself wanting to know Aruna as deeply as possible. She wanted to touch her in other ways. And she wanted to be touched. But she had no words to describe what she had in mind.

One morning, Asami awoke to the sound of the dormitory room door opening, and her eyes fluttered open to see the hall matron with a strange look in her eye. And later that day, she was in a counselor’s office being told by a slightly nervous woman that it was nothing to be ashamed of, that it happened sometimes with the girls at school, but that it caused discord and parents would be concerned and it was best to nip this in the bud as early as possible. 

For the rest of the year, Asami roomed alone. 

IV.

During her summers off, she spent most of her time at the test track. She grew quickly, and once her legs were long enough for her feet to reach the pedals, she started driving lessons. Asami always wanted her father to teach her, and sometimes he did. But most of the time, he delegated the task to his employees, who treated the heiress with a mix deference and officiousness that she often found obnoxious, especially when she was screwing up. “Now, Miss Sato, I’m afraid that we have flooded the fuel line…Miss Sato, that was splendid, let us try, however, to park next time without denting the fender of the vehicle in front of us.”

The only one who spoke to her like a human being was Li, an earthbender boy a year older than her who worked in the pit crew of one of the professional drivers. After lessons, she would sit near the track and talk with him about the prototype engines various racing strategies. And sometimes he would stay after work and listen to pro-bending matches on the radio with her. He loved to talk, and sometimes Asami would just stare at him and watch the way he would gesture with his whole body whenever he got excited and the way he would push his long-ish hair out of his eyes whenever it fell forward. 

On her sixteenth birthday, which occurred just after she arrived home from school, her father gave her a car of her very own, a sleek black convertible with red racing stripes on the sides. When she showed it to Li, he suggested they take it out on the town. He emptied the coin jar that sat beside his bed, and the next night, he appeared with two tickets to the pro-bending tournament, and when she squealed and threw her arms around him in delight, she liked the way he hugged her back. He smelled faintly of motor oil and heavy-duty soap. 

It was during the third match that Asami realized her heart was pounding for more than one reason. It was her very first live pro-bending event, and she could feel the roar of the crowd in her bones. The sound of earth disks making contact with bodies fired her blood, and at one point, she reached over and grabbed Li’s hand and squeezed it as hard as she could. They shared a look, and in that second she knew she wanted to kiss him before the night was over. 

And she did. They were standing outside Narook’s, where the players and the fans went to celebrate late into the night. All evening, she’d been taking nips from the bottle of plum wine Li carried with him in a paper sack. Feeling light-headed, she leaned against the wall to steady herself. He said something about slowing down, and she insisted it wasn’t just the wine. For ten whole seconds, they just stared at each other, and then as he leaned in, she met him halfway, and the kiss was rich and sultry, and a groan escaped the back of her throat when he parted from her before diving back in for more. 

He was different from Aruna. His lips were dryer and rougher, but his tongue was more graceful in the way it slid into her mouth. His arms were thickly muscled from physical labor, and she liked the solidness, the sheer weight of him as he pressed her against the wall. 

They spent many nights that summer in her car, often in the back seat on a deserted stretch of road near the beach where the wind would raise bumps along the skin Li gradually discovered beneath her clothing. It took a few make-out sessions for their shirts to come off, Asami straddling his lap as they kissed heatedly with the top of the convertible up and a downpour covering up the wet sounds of their lips popping against each other. In the heat of it, he slipped a thumb inside her bra and teased the skin on the side of her breast. And then that was off too, and her nipple was in his mouth, and she found herself instinctively pushing her hips down against the rising bulge in his pants. 

It was late in the summer when they started talking about sex. Asami could see the veiled panic in his eyes when she brought up the fact that she was returning to school, and with a rising sense of urgency, he tried to come up with some way to assure himself that their romance could continue beyond her departure. In the car one night, he told her that he loved her, and in response she had just stuck her tongue back in his mouth. She felt things for him, but she didn’t think they could be called “love.”

Nevertheless, one night, she decided to let him make love to her, but the attempt ended when he came precipitously on the car seat, blushing hotly and stammering apologies. They swore they would write letters all year until she came back, but the promise didn’t last even a month into autumn. Because by then Asami was hopelessly in love. 

V.

Her name was Tula, and she had transferred from the Fire Nation Academy for her final year for reasons no one would talk about. She was a year older than Asami and unlike anyone she had ever met before. Though Tula had distant familial connections to royalty, she could not have been more modern. Her clothes were so new they looked like they had been taken out of the shop the second the last stitch was in place. Her hair was bobbed, and she painted her eyes with kohl, which gave her a sultry, dangerous look. And she had a loud, raucous laugh that you could hear at the other end of the dining hall.

Since Aruna, Asami had admired other girls and even thought about kissing them. But she didn’t realize that what she had was a deep, desperate crush until one day during self-defense class when Asami got distracted watching Tula run firebending forms at the other end of the gym. The next thing she knew, she was flat on her back, pinned under the knee of her sparring partner with a lump forming on the back of her head. 

For the rest of class, she sat on the sidelines with an ice pack pressed against the injury. The pain was significant, but she was too engrossed in watching this new girl’s smooth, efficient movements. Her fire was intense, and Asami could feel the heat on her face several paces away. 

At the door to the gym building after class, she ran into Tula, who was patting down her dress and rummaging through her purse in annoyance. She saw Asami and grabbed her by the arm. “Can I bum a smoke?” Her face looked a little frantic, her black-rimmed, golden eyes wide and urgent. Asami stammered something about not having any and hurried away from the girl with the color rising from her neck to her hairline. 

After that, even though she didn’t smoke, she always carried a pack of cigarettes, and one time when she saw Tula outside the gym, she worked up the courage to offer her one. It was only once the older girl graciously accepted that Asami realized she would be expected to smoke as well. Tula lit both of their cigarettes with a flame that danced on the tip of her finger, and Asami noticed that her nails were painted deep maroon, like drops of blood that dotted her pale hands. 

When she inhaled, the ashy burn of it startled her, and she began to cough. One side of Tula’s mouth quirked upward, and if Asami had to guess, she would have said the smile was knowing. 

“I noticed you’re in the senior math class,” the older girl said after blowing a long, graceful column of smoke above her head and toward the gardens. “What are you, some kind of genius?”

Asami shrugged, “My father has had me studying math since I could talk. He says I have a mind for engineering.”

“Oh, so you’re that Sato,” said Tula as if she had just solved a nagging problem. “Well, I’m rubbish at math, and if I fail again, I’ll be stuck in school for another year. Help a girl out, would you?”

And that is how Asami wound up helping Tula every other evening in the Fire Nation girl’s single occupancy suite on the top floor of the dormitory. Tula was a poor student and Asami an impatient teacher, so neither made much effort to get things back on track when the math books were shoved aside for fashion magazines. 

For the first time in three years, Asami felt like she had an actual friend at school, and a friend who was elegant and spontaneous and far more worldly and well-traveled than Asami had any hope of being. Tula loved her rich, long hair and helped Asami update her make-up regime, replacing her baby pink eye-shadows with richer purples that set off her bright green eyes. 

When it came to personal histories, they had almost no boundaries. Asami knew how much Tula hated her parents, how she did only what she needed to in order to stay in their good graces and keep the allowance flowing. Tula told her that after graduation she planned to travel the world and stay as far away from them as possible. And Tula knew everything about Asami’s mother and about her brief romance with Li, which Asami revealed because she was afraid her attraction to the other girl was starting to show. Her crush was the one secret Asami kept to herself. 

But she had reason to hope: hugs that lasted a beat longer than one might expect, the way Tula absently ran her fingers through Asami’s hair when they talked sometimes, or the way she was relatively uninhibited about changing her clothes in Asami’s presence, while Asami resolutely kept hers on, wondering what it all meant. Tula’s skin was pale white to the point of transparency with blue veins that showed just underneath the surface on her torso and upper thighs. Her short hair, however, was jet black and her nails and lips a deep, dark red that made her look exotic and slightly feral. 

Then one night, Asami stopped pining. Tula almost never stopped talking, so Asami simply cut her off in the middle of a diatribe about her firebending instructor with a kiss. When she pulled back, she half expected Tula to scream at her or slap her or simply sit there speechless while Asami slinked out of the room. But she didn’t. Instead, she put both hands on Asami’s face and pulled her back, and her mouth was hungry and wet, her lipstick smearing and giving both of their faces a messy, stung look when they came up for air. 

It was intense and fevered and nothing like her eager fumblings with Li. When Asami slid a hand up the other girl’s shirt—which was white and cut like a man’s work shirt—and palmed the small breast that lay bare underneath, she felt slightly predatory. But then Tula responded in kind, running the flat of her palm up Asami’s thigh and under her skirt, and she felt pursued and desired. 

They enthusiastically relieved one another of their clothes, and Asami kissed the other girl all over, raising red marks on her pale, sensitive skin. She was terrified to admit that she had no idea where any of this was supposed to go. But Tula knew, and all of a sudden, her dark head was between Asami’s thighs, and she was doing something with her tongue that no one in their hygiene class had ever thought to bring up. 

She’d felt that dull, almost painful ache of arousal in the back of her convertible, that vague sensation of wanting something to happen down there. This was nothing like that. This was a fire in her cunt that bloomed throughout her entire body as Tula’s tongue found a rhythm, and her fingers worked expertly inside of her. And soon Asami had to pull a pillow over her face and bite into it to keep from screaming as waves of pleasure quaked through her.

Their ensuing relationship was pure passion, epitomized by their utter disinhibition in bed—though after Aruna, Asami had learned to be more careful. It was Tula who taught Asami all about her body, helping her learn how it responded when touched or kissed in certain ways. And in turn, Asami was enthralled by Tula’s small breasts and curved stomach and learned to crave the taste of her lover on her tongue.

They talked about plans, about how Asami would join Tula in her travels after she graduated. But there were problems. Tula was charismatic and engaging, but her mood could turn in a second. And when something happened that she did not like, she could be spiteful and even cruel. She was also wildly jealous. If she saw Asami sitting with another girl at lunch, Tula would stand just over the other girl’s shoulder and say horrible things to someone standing nearby until the other girl left. By the spring term, Asami looked around and realized that because of Tula, she had no other friends.

Asami was so deeply in love that this might have been bearable, but there were other things. She was impossible to please. And whenever Tula was upset with her, she would become intensely critical. She would tease Asami about the repressiveness of her upbringing, about the fact that she had seen little outside of Republic City and the gilded fortress of her father’s mansion. She would make fun of Asami’s relative conservatism, call her a little tightass princess, and imply that the only reason they were fucking was so that Asami could rebel against her family. “You liked dick before. You’ll go back to sucking it again as soon as you’re out of here,” she said once at the end of a fight, letting the door slam shut and leaving Asami weeping hysterically in her room. 

By the time the year ended, and Tula did graduate, they had become distant. And though she cried to herself when alone, Asami later admitted that it was a relief that she never heard another word from her first true love. One morning that summer, when she looked in the mirror, she noticed that her face had grown startlingly thin, her eyes watery and pale. And at that point, she resolved to stop crying and threw herself into self-defense training and driving and study. She had one year to go before graduation and her 18th birthday. 

VI.

When Asami first met Mako, it was after another year of almost crushing loneliness. She finished school with her eyes to the ground, avoiding further entanglements of any kind at school and then arriving back at her father’s house, ungrounded and unsure of what to do. He was grooming her, she knew, to follow in his footsteps, and the more time she spent learning about Satomobiles and motorbikes, the happier it made him. But none of the people who worked at the track or in the shops were people she recognized. Li was long gone. Her father had been making dramatic changes in personnel, though it was something they never discussed. He still had his secrets. 

Mako fit around her life like her mother’s old, faded robe that Asami would wrap around herself when she was sick. It was comfortable and sweet rather than ardent. And after two weeks of dating, it felt like they had been married ten years. That was alright with Asami. She had had enough grand passion, she felt, for quite some time. 

The first time they fooled around, in the brief interlude between the attack on the arena and her father’s disgrace, Mako went down on her for almost an hour. He was clumsy and inexperienced, but she taught him what she liked and found him an eager student, grateful for everything she did for him and determined to pay her back however he could. 

When his attention started to shift, it took her by surprise. And it was only then that she realized how little she actually knew about him. She had the basics down: parents, brother, pro-bending, but beyond that, he was a sealed book. On the surface, he seemed so steady and faithful, and it had never occurred to her that his steadfastness was as much an act of will as an act of want, that his desire to please her was borne of desperation as well as love. 

In those short weeks, Asami experienced a lifetime’s worth of pain, as the world she thought she knew and understood shattered around her. The loss of Mako’s affection mingled with the other—arguably bigger losses—until it all blended into one tangled mass of grief. It was no easy thing, watching her boyfriend fall in love with the Avatar and deny it to himself and her until Asami forced the issue. But it was only when he volunteered to help Korra infiltrate the Equalists that Asami realized that what he felt for the other girl was real and, to her dismay, stronger than what he felt for her. And she realized that he hadn’t meant to do it, that in all likelihood he had tried not to, and between that and her efforts to resurrect Future Industries, it was easy to let them just be together. Until they weren’t.

Why she kissed him after he robbery she would have been hard pressed to tell even herself. It had something to do with her overwhelming despair. And it had something to do with the words coming out of his mouth as his golden eyes stared intensely back at her. It had been so, so long since someone had truly believed in her, wanted the best for her, accepted her for who she was. And it was hard to separate out that kind of love from romance.

VII.

Every night in the South Pole was cold, and this one was no exception. Inside the great hall, a celebration was keeping everyone else warm, but Asami wrapped her coat around herself and ventured into the crisp night air. 

“They broke up for real this time,” Bolin had said, but Asami was determined not to let herself get sucked back in. No matter what the two of them were calling it, when forced to make a choice, Mako would always choose Korra first. And as little as she truly understood him, she suspected he understood himself even less. 

She took a drag on her cigarette, staring out at the clear sky with the aurora raking across it, and then she heard a sound and turned to see a figure in uniform slipping out the door. 

“Oh,” the figure said. “It is you.”

“General Iroh,” she said, straightening her posture and crushing the spent nub into the ground with her boot. 

“Just Iroh,” he said, looking slightly drunk and a little distracted. “I was just wondering…I thought you might…” he stumbled around for a second trying to find the words.”I mean, could I borrow a cigarette?”

She was tipsy herself, and she laughed at his awkwardness as she drew her case out. “You can have one,” she said.

“It’s a bad habit, I know,” he said sheepishly, selecting one out of the gold box. 

Asami took another for herself. “I don’t do it very often,” she said, and to her delight, he lit it for her with a flame at the tip of his finger. She took a long drag and stared at him, willing him to say more. He seemed shy, and she liked that in a general. 

“You’re an excellent pilot,” he said finally, apropos of nothing. She accepted the compliment with a smile and continued to wait. “I’d like to speak with you sometime about requisitioning some of your company’s planes for the United Forces and perhaps planning a training regime for our pilots.”

“That sounds like an excellent idea,” she said, blowing a column of smoke in the air above their heads. 

His hair, always so carefully slicked into place, started to fall forward on his forehead as he looked down. “They’re much more maneuverable,” you see. “Much more effective in a close range fight than an airship.”

“You don’t have to tell me.” She looked into his eyes and asked herself why this man had rushed all the way down here from Republic City and why he was smoking cigarettes outside with her while the party raged on within. “Do you have time to discuss it now? Perhaps there’s a place we could go on your ship,” she said, lowering her voice to nearly a whisper. 

She saw the lump in his throat bob as he considered this. He’s quite a bit older than me, she thought. But then again, she was sick of children. 

…

The sofa in his office aboard ship was hard, but she didn’t mind. She liked the gentle way he cradled her head with one hand as he rested between her legs and kissed her, enjoyed the chiseled lines of his abdomen as she pulled aside his jacket and shirt. 

“I really like you, but we don’t have to do this if you don’t wa…” she cut him off with her mouth and felt him press back down into her. It was nice. It was simple. It was wanting and being wanted. 

Soon, her boots were off and her skirt bunched up around her waist. She pushed him up, reversing their positions. And as she lowered herself onto him, she saw the flush of arousal and bashfulness flood his pale skin and noticed the particular brightness of his golden eyes. Another firebender, she thought. I really do have a type. 

Her hips picked up an easy rhythm, and the warm tightness of him inside her spiked that swell of pleasure that radiated from the center of her body outward. He started to lose himself and met her rolling rhythm with deep thrusts, his breath coming out in little grunts each time their bodies collided. Despite his reticence at her proposal, he knew what he was doing, and when she asked him to touch her, he reached down to find her clit with his thumb, pressing and rubbing until her body seized and he reached up to tangle a hand in her hair and pull her mouth down to his. 

“Asami, I…” she heard the desperation in his voice and pulled off of him. He took his cock in his hand and grasped it, tugging once, twice, and then spilling his seed on his own stomach. 

When their breathing slowed down, he gave her a gentle kiss and then promptly cleaned them both up, bringing in towels from his private bathroom and offering her a cup of tea. He was courtly, even the aftermath of their precipitous tryst. 

“I don’t usually do this,” she said, recognizing how disingenuous it sounded.

“Neither do I,” he replied, and it was just like their banter about cigarettes.

She wasn’t sure if this was the start of something. She wasn’t sure if she even wanted it to be. She was attracted to Iroh, but it was hard to tell if this would turn into love. 

What she did feel sure about, looking back at him over a porcelain teacup was that her life was only beginning and that many loves and many adventures were awaiting her. And though most of those would likely end, perhaps there was a great love, a grand passion out there still waiting for her. It could wind up being this general from the Fire Nation, but it also might not.

“You’re a prince too?” she asked, apropos of nothing.

“Yes,” he said, gazing quizzically back at her over his tea. 

Well, she thought. Princes are princes. But I am going to be a queen.


End file.
